About Me

Staten Island, New York, United States
I've worked in the FDNY for the past 29 years. I've written freelance commentary for the past twenty years and have one book published "Looking Up (A Working View)," Quiet Storm Publishers. For those of you with whom my ideas resonate, we probably share a common love of Liberty. If you like anything you read here, feel free to reuse...just please add my appellation. Life's been more than fair to me and this is a part of my humble offering back. If you have any corrections, or additions, please email me (my email address is in my profile) and I’ll both appreciate and consider them all and do my best to get back to you with my thoughts on it. My ideas are always evolving and I’m open to persuasion in all areas. I thank all those who've taken some of their time to read here.

Monday, August 30, 2010

Freedom is Liberty NOT License and Civil Rights are Individual Rights NOT Group Rights

“The tea party movement has a pretty simple and straightforward idea – let the people be. Some people like to work hard, some people don’t care about work. It’s all cool – but just don’t try to take from those that work and give to those that don’t. It’s called liberty – and that’s what worth fighting for...” (An American Conservative)

Those words are undeniably correct.

Liberty is self-ownership (full responsibility for yourself), THAT is America’s Founding Design, NOT “license,” which is the (non-existent) “right” of each of us to “do anything we want, so long as we don’t (deliberately) harm others.”

License validates recklessness and irresponsibility, while Liberty validates only as much risk or recklessness as you can afford to bear ON YOUR OWN.

License runs as much counter to Liberty as the concept of (non-existent) Group Rights runs counter to Civil Rights/Individual Rights.

There are folks who mistakenly think that “Liberals believe in enhancing Jefferson’s model to include Group Rights and a much more powerful and interventionist federal government, at least on the side of what they see as “right and just,” which includes, at least to some extent redistributing wealth, especially incomes, so that those who do not produce are not allowed to fall too far from those who do.”

NONE of that is part of any modern “Liberal ideology.” All of it is merely misguided thinking that runs antithetical to the “Jeffersonian principles” they always pay homage to.

Since group rights obliterate individual rights, we can’t have a legal and economic system that has both. Likewise, since license eventually obliterates Liberty, we can’t have any kind of system that seeks to “balance both.”

Individual rights and Liberty work. They are what forged America’s growth and ascendancy. Your personal experiences in places where collectivism, group rights/entitlements and license (at least license for the politically connected) have seemed to frustrate those who “wish” that such things could work...somewhere...at some time.

I understand that frustration. From my earliest days, I wished it would rain root beer.

To my knowledge it never has...anywhere, nor at any time.

IF those that disagree with the statements above could’ve come up with instances where group rights, license and greater centralized direction worked after being into action...they would have.